A smooth start, but there’s still so much more room to grow for the Philippines Kings League.
The Philippines Kings League (PKL) Spring 2025, the inaugural season for the Filipino national league of Honor of Kings, just had its opening weekend, and we’ve got some thoughts.
To bring you up to speed, Honor of Kings (or HOK for short) is one of the biggest Mobile MOBAs in the world. A majority of their player base has been concentrated in China for years, but recently they’ve been going global. They’ve had a number of invitationals in the past, but now they’re all-in in making a competitive international esports scene
The first step to that, of course, is to establish regional leagues to bring interest and competition to the game. Enter the PKL Spring 2025, our months-long HOK league, which will determine which three teams will represent us in the Honor of Kings World Cup 2025 taking place in the Esports World Cup in Riyadh later this August.
That’s already a lot of stakes, especially for a fledgling league. Yes, the Philippines is rather strong in the mobile gaming space, but HOK is still new territory. We had a pretty good showing during the HOK Invitational S3 held last month, and the PKL might be the perfect opportunity for us to take that to the next level.
Getting the Right Crew
While the PKL Spring 2025 is starting small, it still needs a strong broadcasting talent lineup. HOK is facing some stiff competition here in the Philippines and they need personalities that’ll get people to pay attention to the league. Fortunately, they came out swinging in that department.
Many of these names and faces should be familiar to Filipino esports fans, especially Mara Aquino and Manjean Faldas. Both have been the face of the MLBB esports scene for years and the fact that they’re playing for the competition means that the PKL is not messing around. The charisma they bring, whether it’s Mara hosting the pregame show or Manjean bringing his antics to the casting desk, really elevates the entire broadcast.
That being said, there’s really no hiding how small-scale PKL Spring 2025 is. It’s understandable, but still, teams playing in a private studio with no fans is a bummer. That’ll should be alleviated during playoffs, where there’ll likely be a live venue, so we’ll just have to wait till then.
Raising the Competition
As for the level of the games played, it’s still too early to say. Obviously, the league is still new, and we’ll need more time to see the strength of all the teams. But, at a casual glance, it seems like we already have an expected pecking order.
Blacklist International did come out of the HOK Invitational S3 looking like the best team in the Philippines. RWE Kadiliman also looks much better, but is it because they’ve improved, or is it because the competition isn’t at the same level as them? Some of the games played were scrappy, downright sloppy, and a clear contrast from what we’ve seen in the Invitational.
Of course, we know that there’ll always be a gap between international and regional play. It’s just apparent that our PKL Spring 2025 teams still have a long road of improvement ahead of them. Hopefully, as the season goes on, all the PKL teams can begin to really challenge each other and raise the bar of the competition.
Banner photo from HoK Philippines Esports.